#419 Kelly Johnson: Skunk Works

**David Senra** (0:00)
So a few weeks ago, I made this episode called How SpaceX Works. And while I was reading about the way SpaceX operates, I came across this very interesting sentence. I'm going to read this to you. It says, many of these ideas are not even new. Lockheed's Skunk Works ran similar approaches 60 years ago. Founder Kelly Johnson's 14 Rules reads like a SpaceX operations manual. So that made me want to read Kelly Johnson's autobiography, which is called More Than My Share of it All. He wrote it when he was 75 years old. And the first thing I want to tell you about in the book, I actually want to jump towards the end of the book. It's one of the last chapters. The chapter is called It's No Secret, and it breaks down how he built and how he ran Skunk Works. But before I jump into the book, there's this list of 20 ideas. I want to give you an overview of basically how he ran this operation. I think telling you this list of 20 ideas upfront will make it easy to remember and understand everything that comes after. So number one, a breakthrough program is an organization before it's a design. So this is one of maybe the greatest designer of aircrafts of all time. In the case of the plane, the SR-71, which Kelly designed all the way back in the 1960s, it still holds to this day, 60 years later, it still holds the record for the fastest air breathing manned aircraft. When Elon Musk is telling his team about the importance of speed and how speed is a massive competitive advantage for business, he uses the SR-71 as an example. Let me read you this quote from Elon about this. He says, the best offense and defense is speed. The SR-71 Blackbird, again, a design from Kelly Johnson and Skunk Works. The SR-71 Blackbird is a military plane with almost no defense except acceleration. It was never shot down, not even once. Over 3,000 missiles were shot at the SR-71 Blackbird and none hit. All it did was go faster. The power of speed is underappreciated as a competitive factor. So back to these lists of ideas. Saying a breakthrough program is an organization before it is a design. Johnson's most important invention may have been Skunk Works. It's self and it gives an overview of how he designed it. Small, empowered teams, streamlined processes, and a culture willing to attempt things that had not been done before. Number 2, speed is not a side effect. It is a design requirement. And what they mean is not just speed in the plane, speed in the completion of the project. So they build the P-80. Johnson and his team delivered the prototype in 143 days. Number 3, use a few exceptional people, not many average ones. Johnson would describe Skunk Works as a few great people using straightforward methods with minimum overhead. Number 4, the builder needs real authority. Johnson's operating model put program control close to the person responsible for technical success. In his autobiography, he says he lets managers run programs with minimum interference while giving them both authority and responsibility. Number 5, bureaucracy is an engineering variable. Johnson treated reporting, approvals, meetings and customer visits as drag. And this is such a great line. He paired away anything that used up time without advancing the project. Number 6, start building before the paperwork is perfect. So in one case, they're designing a plane. It says, Lockheed says the formal contract arrived four months after work had already begun. Skunk Works often began on a handshake when the need was urgent. Number 7, the customer must be small and empowered too. Johnson's model did not merely demand lean contractor teams. It demanded lean interfaces with the military or intelligence customer. This reduced misunderstanding and correspondence. This one is fascinating. Number 8, secrecy can accelerate work, not just hide it. Secrecy reduced outside interference and let a compact group move fast. The team was warned not to discuss the project outside their small organization.
Number 9, argue with data even when you're a junior. This is one of the first things Johnson does when he's actually hired at Lockheed. We'll talk about that later. Very early at Lockheed, Johnson challenged the stability analysis for this plane that they're building. He went back to the wind tunnel and then solved the stability problem himself. Number 10, a designer should understand the pilot sphere. So what's happening here is if you're designing a part and that part's going in a plane, when they test that plane, you're flying in that plane yourself. You have to ride with the pilot. When your life is literally on the line, you're going to do a better job. Number 11, don't optimize the old fight. Change the envelope. So one of the most famous designs, planes, you've probably heard of it, it's called the U-2. The U-2 did not win by dog fighting. It won by flying so high that fighters and missiles of the time could not reach it. Number 12, make simplicity a weapon. So he repeats this over and over again. His principle was kiss, keep it simple, stupid. Johnson believed that kiss was a survival method for complex programs. And again, he talked about over and over again the importance of minimizing paperwork. Number 13, I think is self-explanatory. Extreme performance often comes from one brutally clear priority. Number 14, the contractor can create the requirements. What this means is when they're building the F-104, the idea came instead of coming from the Air Force to Lockheed, it came from Lockheed to the Air Force. Says Lockheed submitted this proposal before the Air Force even had an operational requirement for that kind of aircraft. Number 15 really to me is the importance of just this continuous learning that Kelly talks about over and over again in his memoir. A lot of the designs he's most well known for has to do with stealth and it says stealth began as an operational idea first. And what they mean by that is he was already obsessed with many for many decades thinking about radar, visibility, speed, altitude and exposure time. Number 16, at Mach 3, the airplane becomes a materials science program. So what they're talking about here is when you're inventing the SR-71, that's the plane Elon saying, you know, using the illustration at speed is a competitive advantage. It's not just an aerodynamic achievement. Whenever you're at the very forefront, you don't just have to invent the product, you have to invent the methods to create the product. So in this case, they had to invent special fuels, materials, sealants, paints, wirings, plugs and manufacturing techniques all had to be invented. Number 17, this is really speaking to the fact that the best companies are these systems where everything affects everything else. It says this is systems thinking at a very high level. So it's the engine, inlet, airframe and heat system are one machine. Again, they're talking about the SR-71, the fastest plane ever made. Less than 20% of the SR-71's total thrust came from the engine itself. The rest came from the inlet, the movable spike, afterburner flow path and nacelle design. Number 18, know when to kill your own brilliant idea. So Kelly Johnson had this idea for a hydrogen powered plane. But as they got deeper down the design path, he realized it was too impractical and too unwieldy. And so he scrapped the design and canceled the project. Number 19, integrity is a performance multiplier. Johnson sometimes returned government money or declined work when he thought the result would not be effective. In his autobiography, he said he never designed a plane he didn't believe in. And number 20, mistakes are acceptable, concealed mistakes are not. Johnson's standards were brutal but productive.